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Floating World Pictures is a production company that makes documentaries about people who take risks and change the world. Learn about their award-winning projects, such as "Terrence McNally: Every Act Of Life" and "Nasrin", and their founders, Jeff Kaufman and Marcia S. Ross.
- Nasrin
Visit Our Nasrin Website. Available on Amazon Prime, Google...
- Nasrin
Mar 18, 2022 · Ukiyo—meaning “floating world”—encapsulates the flourishing pleasure-seeking culture in Edo Japan (1603 – 1867). How did the “floating world” come to define Japan from the 17th to the 19th century?
Jun 14, 2024 · Includes unlimited streaming of Floating World Pictures with Ocean Moon via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
May 10, 2022 · A review of the debut album by the duo of Chestnutt and Wong, featuring collaborations with various musicians and instruments. The album is described as a series of improvised musical images that capture a moment in time, like the National Geographic photos.
- The Floating World
- The Yoshiwara Pleasure Quarter
During Japan’s Edo period (1615–1868) the phrase "the floating world" (ukiyo) evoked an imagined universe of wit, stylishness, and extravagance—with overtones of naughtiness, hedonism, and transgression. Implicit was a contrast to the humdrum of everyday obligation. The concept of the floating world began in the Japanese heartland, migrated eastward, and came to full flower in Edo (present-day Tokyo), where its main venues were popular Kabuki theaters and red-light districts. Each offered an array of rich sensory experiences to the fraction of the populace able to partake of them directly. The floating world also afforded vicarious pleasure to countless others throughout the Japanese islands, for whom it was experienced second-hand through theater, song, story, gossip, and pictures.
Under Japan’s last ruling military clan, the Tokugawa, the rapid growth of cities gave rise to a lively urban culture. Increasingly literate, wealthy, and sophisticated, the townspeople of Edo became heroes in high-spirited stories made up by their peers. Fashionable and often bawdy, these tales became the basis for a flood of advertisements for the floating world, in the form of inexpensive woodblock prints and guidebooks. Less numerous—but no less important—were paintings of the same subjects catering to wealthier people. Such paintings, which employed costly jewel-like pigments and intensive labor, could be bought ready-made or, more commonly, commissioned by a patron.
The sole licensed red-light district in the city of Edo (present-day Tokyo), the Yoshiwara was a walled and moated compound of about twenty acres. First established in 1617 near the city’s center, the Yoshiwara was relocated to the northeast forty years later. During the quarter’s heyday, from the late seventeenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries, countless men made the journey—a trip of some two miles—to reach the quarter’s fabled Main Gate (Omon). Within the Yoshiwara’s walls were teahouses, shops, and more than a hundred brothels arranged in a rectangular grid, divided from end to end by a main street, Nakanocho. The streets were lined with logo-like crests and names indicating the locations of brothels and other businesses.
Music, food, and drink were all on offer, but prostitutes were the star attractions of this bustling city within a city. By the end of the eighteenth century, more than 4,000 prostitutes worked in the Yoshiwara. Ranked by brothel owners according to skill, cost, and services, the most expensive were elite courtesans, whose professional names were passed down from a woman to her successor within the brothel. Rigorously trained in music, calligraphy, poetry, and other refined arts, these women were accessible only through strict protocols, requiring huge payments and tips at three preliminary meetings. Other prostitutes sat in latticed showrooms, on view to prospective clients. At the bottom of the hierarchy were moat-side prostitutes, whose services were quick and inexpensive. Many Yoshiwara prostitutes, including those promoted by brothel owners to the highest ranks, started life in impoverished homes in the countryside. Taken from their families, they were brought to the quarter, trained, and typically bound to brothels during the term of a ten-year contract.
The famous Japanese woodblock prints known as ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world", had their origins in these districts, and often depicted scenes of the floating world itself such as geisha, kabuki actors, sumo wrestlers, samurai, merchants, and prostitutes.
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Visit Our Nasrin Website. Available on Amazon Prime, Google Play, Apple TV, Vudu, and YouTube. NASRIN trailer.
